How'd it go today?

Today went as I expected. Easy as can be but boring as hell. My main groundie has been out since last week because of a family medical emergency so I?ve been pretty much on light duty. Some easy deadwood/ clearance prunes yesterday and today was reopening a half mile long gas well lane. They have me cutting to fifteen feet hitch and five foot on either side of the lane. Ground to sky would be faster , but it is what it is. Spent the whole day with the boom inverted over the back of the truck cutting a little bit every setup. Gotta split a bit of firewood now to take to my parents this week. Once again I?m behind on getting them stocked up. Maybe next year I?ll be ahead of the game:(

I need that t-shirt as well
 
Toolbox meetings... Our supervisor does a little quiz at the end verbally. I always get a chuckle out of that. In one ear and out the other for most and especially the young guys. You guessed it, I always ace the 'paying attention' quiz.

I like it too, I gotta get back to that, thanks for the reminder.

Loggers for the win!

:thumbup:
 
How'd you get home, a quad? Or maybe a pick up truck.

What time does Mr prairie griz get up? I hope we're talking 5.30am at the latest;)
 
I'm going to forget you said that and just think of you as a 4-4.30AM kinda guy. Like Big Al!!
 
On the road again!

2 on the crew stayed up all night rebuilding the PTO in the chip truck. Done by 5 am. Rest well!

So at 8 am, the rest of us (4, yay! - my Paul Bunyan friend was along for the day!) headed to the shop to check the tranny fluid levels, reload all the gear that had served out of the pickup last week, and hitch up the chipper. So by 8:30, we were headed out the driveway to the first job. I was at the wheel and instantly I knew it was bad news -- same old behavior as last week: coughing, sputtering, low power. I gave the big thumbs down out the window, we pulled over immediately. I let the foreman take the truck and I followed him in the pickup. We opted for a back highway instead of the Interstate. Truck made it about 5 miles, then sputtered and died.

The truck repair shop had replaced the high pressure oil pump and lines (a steal at $3K :whine:) and it had ran fine on the way home from Kansas City, apart from the PTO incident. On the side of the road, we checked the oil -- way down, but shouldn't have caused it to stall out. Foreman ran back into town to pick up a couple of gallons of Rotella. When he got back, we put in a gallon and the truck turned over, so our merry caravan continued down the road -- coughing and sputtering, nearly dying on the hills. It died one more time about 5 more miles down the road, so we got it to turn over again, limped a little further, then found a parking lot where we could dump off the chipper. On to KC, forget the job -- directly back to the shop!

They were sympathetic to our plight, got a tech out to the running truck within 10 min with his diagnostic laptop. Our foreman ran down the scenario with him and he checked the newly installed high pressure oil pump. He felt the sensor pigtail coming off the back, jiggled it and instantly cured the rough running problem! He unplugged it and looked at it -- sure enough, it was carbonized inside the contacts. He told us that should've been SOP -- whenever they change the pump, they should've changed the wiring harness. He got us right into the shop and had a new pigtail on it within another 15-20 mins. Diagnostics good, quick test drive around the area for another 10 mins and we were ready to go to work! Nothing like starting work at 12:30 and knowing you have about 8 hours ahead of you!

Job #1: Removed two small dying ashes from a backyard. No access, so dragged everything out to streetside. Done in just over 1/2 an hour. Stump grinding to come.
Job #2: Removed a Bradford pear and a river birch planted far too close to the house. Other two crewmates joined us in the log truck and we got to test our our new grapple claw. Worked great, done in about an hour. Stump grinding to come.
Job #3: Removed an ash in the back yard. Climbed & pieced out, dropped some leaders, a couple limbs over the house had to be rigged down. With 6 people, we made fast work, done in just under 2 hours.
P1350532.jpg P1350535.jpg P1350546.jpg P1350552.jpg P1350560.jpg P1350563.jpg
Umm, fellas --- I really think we need our mini skid. Good thing Paul Bunyan was on the scene! (We bent the wheel bearings on the 700lb. handtruck.)
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Job #4: Between jobs 3&4, I had to go dump the truck, but the organic recycler was closing at 5, no way I was going to make it in 20 min. So I headed up to an outdoor concert amphitheater 30 min away. Only problem was I had all the saws on board the truck! Rest of the crew headed over to the last job and started anyway. Foreman made a go of it with the Silky, taking down most limbs of a mimosa and a pitch pine with just the hand saw. Everything was stacked by the road, ready to chip. Out came the 395XP and down came the spars. Then we also took out 2 redbuds. Wrapped it up by 6:30, headed home. Whew!
 
Good day.

How do you price so much work? You’re knocking out a lot of different jobs daily. Do you price yourself evenings/weekends?
 
We try not to work weekends & evenings, it just works out that way sometimes. Esp. when we were trying to make up for lost time -- didn't work Monday due to the PTO incident, didn't start until noon due to the truck. So we basically crammed in 2 days worth of work into about 6 hours -- thanks to using both trucks and the boosted crew of 6 (usually we're at 4 for a head count) -- pulled in all available manpower for the day. We've had to do slightly lower prices lately to get some key jobs (just by $150-200), but that enabled us to stack some close proximity work together and knock it out in rapid succession.
 
GP, I'll have to take a pic of my handtruck. It that same HF frame, but blew the wheels out again and again. I bought one piece rims and tires from HF, and needed a slightly longer axle. I had some mods welded on that make it extra useful. I use it, along with having an AT. Two different tools.

Just have the boss' put the eye pro money in the AT fund, if there isn't a new eye fund. One-eye Guy lost his eye from an infection from a wood sliver. One-eye Bob just walked into a small branched still on the tree.
 
Manitoba maple removal today, half was climbed the other half was a straight drop. Driveway was sealed pavers so the climbed brush was used for a bed. HO.clean up. Neighbour got me the job. Neighbour was willing to help, as were his far away brothers. HO came home
.... Oh...that's why everyone wanted to help.
 
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